


the game

by westwind



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance, actually idk what it is, i think this is crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwind/pseuds/westwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q and Bond's flirting gets a bit ridiculous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the game

Q has a list of reasons why he shouldn’t sleep with James Bond. It begins and ends with, “He is a weapon. He will destroy you and never look back.”

It’s a grim thought, but it’s a bit hard to hold on to when said weapon slinks into his office doing its best dejected-puppy impression. Q stops his typing and, without looking up from the screen, says, “Give it here, 007.”

A handgun is deposited on his desk. It is snapped neatly in half.

Q would laugh, but that would be encouraging him. Bond, who doesn’t need any encouraging in the first place, sits on the edge of Q’s desk and straightens his bloody stupid tie that’s just as pristine and unruffled as his bloody stupid suit and his bloody stupid face. 

“I know what you’re going to say, but it was me or the gun. It fulfilled its purpose perfectly well by saving my life.”

Q glares at him over the top of his laptop. “Actually, that gun was intended to last for quite a while and accompany you on many missions. Contrary to how it may seem, we don’t have an endless supply of money, and there’s no way I will be able to get the time or the funding for the vast array of exploding items you’re constantly badgering me about if I have to keep replacing—”

He stops here because he realizes that Bond has been staring at him from the moment he began talking. Well, staring isn’t quite the word he’s looking for. A more apt description would be stripping him down and doing utterly unspeakable things to him with his eyes.

The faint suggestion of a smile ghosts across Bond’s face—it looks almost predatory—and Q has the feeling that they’re playing some sort of ridiculous game that he doesn’t know the rules to. Really, they’ve been playing it for a while now, but it’s only just come to his attention. 

Q coughs to cover up his sudden pause. “Well. None of that matters, because you are wasting my valuable time.”

Bond’s mouth twitches. “Really,” he replies, “because I’m fairly sure you asked me to come here so you could lecture me about my abuse of the equipment.”

“Out.” Q jabs his finger at the door. “Or your next exploding pen will go off in your pocket.”

Bond leaves, and Q decidedly does not take advantage of the lovely view he provides as he goes. He does, however, bang his head on the desk and call himself as many variations of ‘idiot’ as he can come up with. If this is a game, Q has definitely lost the first round. And he hates losing.

\---

The next mission takes Bond to Spain. Q follows a few days later to pass a few scraps of information and hand over yet another piece of tech that’ll probably be dashed to pieces in a matter of hours. He also has a few plans of his own, but they’re unimportant at the moment. 

The ballroom is crowded, and Q feels a bit claustrophobic in the crush of chattering partygoers. He can’t remember how long it’s been since he last wore a tuxedo. Still, he’s nothing if not adaptable.

“Where are you, 007?” he says into Bond’s earpiece.

“Right beside you, actually,” comes the smooth reply from over his shoulder. “Need a new pair of glasses?”

“No, just a bit crowded in here,” Q answers, turning to face him. Bond is impeccable, as usual, aside from a faint smudge of lipstick on his collar. That makes something dark and bitter uncoil itself in his stomach, but he’ll have time to think about it later—right now the game is on, and it’s his move.

Q leans in to straighten the other man’s bowtie, muttering, “The target won’t be here tonight. He’s left unexpectedly for Paris—we’re still trying to find out exactly why.”

It’s an infinitesimally small motion, but Q could swear that Bond leans toward him when he steps away, as if drawn by a magnet. “Lovely,” the agent grumbles. “Well, I might as well enjoy myself while I’m here.”

“Exactly what I had in mind,” Q replies cheerfully.

They’ve been walking as they talked, and, slowly, they’ve drifted toward the dancefloor in the middle of the room. Q places his hand on Bond’s arm, lightly guiding him toward the polished wooden floor. “Would you like to dance?”

Bond’s face doesn’t change, but Q can read his thoughts as easily as a line of code: You’ve got to be kidding me and then Sure, I’ll play your game. The music is slow and flowing, possibly some sort of waltz. Q has a moment of wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do with his hands that he thinks he covers up rather smoothly until he feels a rumbling chuckle pass through Bond’s chest.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” 007 asks.

“Q branch requested that I keep you away from the women so that they don’t have to deal with scrambling to find you after you disconnect for a quick shag,” Q smirks. His snippy comeback might take a while longer than usual—he’s being lulled into a strange sense of security by the warmth that Bond seems to radiate like some sort of space heater. He really should get this over with before he starts purring like a cat.

“Also, I have something for you,” he says as the music comes to a halt. Bond does not remove his hand from the small of Q’s back. Q does not take his hand off Bond’s hip.

“That exploding watch you promised me?” Bond smiles. 

Q shakes his head. “Just a regular radio transmitter, I’m afraid.”

He tears his gaze away from Bond’s—their noses are practically touching—to get the radio and slip it into Bond’s breast pocket. Then, almost as an afterthought, he kisses him.

Bond immediately leans into it like someone’s flipped the ‘on’ switch in his head, and this is not what Q had planned, he’d been going for quick and teasing but now Bond’s sucking at his upper lip and he’s not sure he’s going to be able to stop. Through an incredible force of will, he extricates himself and smiles at Bond, the barest twitch of his mouth, before walking away. He can practically feel Bond’s eyes burning at his back. Score one for Q. 

\---

They don’t talk about the kiss. Q goes back to MI6 and continues to guide Bond as the voice in his ear. Q talks while he works—sometimes Bond chooses to carry on the conversation, sometimes he doesn’t.

(“Has anyone ever told you that you have a bad case of word vomit?” Bond asks.

“No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that particular phrasing,” Q replies. He refuses to take the hint and continues his rambling explanation of the security program he’s working on at the moment.) 

They don’t talk about the kiss.

\--- 

Round three occurs when Q is saddled with going on yet another mission with Bond, this time to hack into a computer that even he can’t infiltrate remotely. Q doesn’t know why he couldn’t have had someone less annoying assigned to work with him, like 002. When he had asked M, the man had simply replied that they work well as a team. Q supposes they do, but they are also childish and competitive and likely to kill each other rather than the targets. 

The hallway is plain and echoingly empty. Bond keeps glancing back at Q every few seconds, which is utterly unnecessary because Q can and will take care of himself. 

M’s voice drifts from his earpiece, “It should be the third door on the left once you turn this corner.” 

Once they turn the corner, however, they are faced with the sight of at least twenty armed men on the other side of the long hallway. Bond slips back around the corner like a darting snake, followed by Q, but there’s no way that they haven’t been seen. 

Someone shouts and Bond fires a few shots around the corner, and Q is about to add a few bullets of his own when Bond hisses, “Run,” and grabs his wrist hard enough to bruise.

“Are you serious?” Q yells, but he can hear footsteps heavy behind them and isn’t about to have his arm broken by a double-O with muscles of pure titanium.

They dash down a stairwell and through the twisting hallways of the abandoned building—Q knows this experience better as a red dot labeled “007” racing across a screen. He finds this experience much more exhilarating than he probably should, an attitude not shared by Bond, who is cursing under his breath as he runs.

“About twenty men in pursuit,” Bond tells M.

Q can hear the response through his earpiece: “Stay out of the way for a few minutes and 025 and 011 will be in to help you. Keep the Quartermaster safe.”

Q is positively spitting like an angry cat at this point. He might be a valuable asset, but he is certainly not some fragile piece of china to be kept on a shelf—he wouldn’t be at MI6 in the first place if he couldn’t hold his own in a fight. He is about to tell Bond this when he is roughly hauled into a closet.

“A closet? Really, Bond? Couldn’t you have possibly thought up a better hiding place?”

“Shut up.” The words are breathed onto his neck—it’s a rather cramped closet. Every inch of Bond is pressed against every inch of Q. He briefly wonders why the world seems to hate him so much.

“I can’t believe this is happening. You don’t have to be so damn protective all the time, you know,” Q mutters, and he’s combining too many issues into this conversation, but he’s trying to distract himself from the warm flush that is creeping up his body.

“Shut. Up.” Bond presses a finger to Q’s lips. Q is fairly sure he can feel his eyes cross.

They remain like this for an agonizing minute until shots can be heard outside and M informs them that reinforcements have arrived. Q throws himself into the fight and imagines that every shot he fires is hitting Bond in his smug face. 

\---

Utter disbelief is scrawled across Q’s face when Bond stumbles into his office at midnight cradling a camera tie-pin and a laser-cutting lockpick like they are fragile as birds’ bones.

“Wow,” Q says, brushing a few wayward strands of hair out of his eyes. “It looks like you’ve finally managed to bring everything back in one piece. Excellent job, 007.”

“I’m fairly sure that all the equipment’s in order,” Bond says. “Would you like to check?”

Q barely stops himself from snorting, because really, who even says things like that? Then he notices how Bond is sagging against the desk, blood flecking his gray suit, tiny cuts traveling up his cheek. 

“You need to go to medical and get yourself checked out.”

Before Bond can open his mouth, Q pins him with the glare he reserves for new recruits he finds checking their Facebooks when they should be hacking databases. “I’m not kidding, Bond. You can either go yourself or I’ll walk you down the hallway holding your hand.”

“Yes, mother,” Bond says, his delivery completely deadpan. 

Q tries to return to his coding, but the letters and numbers blur together on the screen and he simply can’t focus. He makes a valiant attempt to pay attention for about half an hour. Then, he mutters, “Fuck this,” and walks over to medical.

One of the nurses walks him over to a cot without even asking him why he’s here, which pisses him off even further. Bond is asleep, but the nurse informs him that he’s only sustained a few minor injuries before walking away.

It’s weird, seeing Bond asleep—none of the myriad guards and barriers he usually puts up are in place. Q isn’t quite sure why he’s here, or what he’d planned to do in the first place. He takes a step toward the cot, feels useless, and walks back out the door.

He has an epiphany as he’s pouring himself a cup of the awful excuse for a beverage that MI6 deems coffee. Bond, without any of the emotional barriers he wears like armor—he wants that every day. He wants to tear down the walls and take what’s inside them for himself. He is slowly but surely starting to lose, but he’s still willing to put up one hell of a fight.

Q sighs, decides that this is a debate that he’s going to have with himself when he’s not dead tired, and goes back to work.

\---

Things start to get a ridiculous around Valentine’s Day. The day before, Q found a bunch of roses in his office. He knows they’re from 007 because really, who else would be old-fashioned enough to buy a bouquet of red roses?

Proper retaliation is called for. Currently, it is 2 A.M. on February 14th and he is making a small adjustment to the promised exploding pen that he’ll be giving Bond in a few hours, before the double-O heads off to Bolivia. Namely, he is changing its color from sleek black to pink covered with red hearts. 

He hasn’t slept in two days, and is running on more coffee than most people consume in a week. He is beginning to question his life and job choices. 

(Their conversation a few hours later:

“Q. You’re looking a bit… wild today.”

“I’ve been working on something new for you. Here.”

“That’s certainly a fashion statement.”

“I knew you’d like it.”)

When Q gets back to his desk, he finds a large heart-shaped box of chocolates. He throws it out the door in a fit of pique and hopes it hits whichever one of his hapless underlings is helping 007 break into his office.

\---

Eve Moneypenny is Q’s friend. They go out for drinks about once a week, and she tries to get him drunk enough that he’ll talk about Bond. As far as he knows, the only thing that she’s managed to get out of him in his inebriated state is that he’s “really fucking gorgeous,” so she seems to have given up her half-baked matchmaking plan for now. 

Which is why her visit to Q’s office on Monday is entirely unexpected. Q is doing a crossword while waiting for a ballistics report to be emailed to him, and Bond is breathing down his neck and occasionally contributing a useless answer. Bond moves away to his perch on the end of the desk when Eve sits down.

“I need to talk to you two,” she says.

Q nods. Bond gives a long-suffering sigh.

“Whatever you two have going on—this ridiculous courtship display or whatever—needs to stop.”

Q’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?” he says, practically radiating indignation.

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. It’s not really conductive to work getting done to have you hanging around Q branch at all hours of the day—” Eve points a finger at Bond, “—or you constantly making him useless toys and pining in the mission room when he’s gone.” Eve glares at Q, and Q’s return stare, although shocked, could probably melt butter. 

“You’re distracting everyone with your constant flirting and posturing. You can practically smell the sexual tension the second you waling into Q branch. Just get it over with and shag.”

Before Eve closes the door, she calls back, “Oh, and you have five minutes before M wants to see the both of you.”

Q looks at Bond. Bond looks at Q. The second the door closes, they practically lunge at each other.

Bond has Q pinned against the wall and Q isn’t sure how he came to be there. He digs his fingers into the tendons of Bond’s neck and growls into the kiss, “I win,” because he’ll be damned if he’s going to call it a draw. Bond curls his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and, on second thought, Q doesn’t care about the game any more. 

But when they come up for air, Bond mutters, “We’ll see about that.” 

Q grins wickedly.


End file.
